Emax Brand Guidelines: The Landmark Group’s Electronics Chain, From a Sharjah Big Box

The electronics arm of a Dubai retail group founded in Bahrain.

Emax is the consumer-electronics chain of the Landmark Group, the Dubai-based retail and hospitality group. English Wikipedia says the group was founded in 1973 by Micky Jagtiani, with its first store in Bahrain; Arab News gave the same founding year and single Bahrain store in November 2006, describing a group of more than 400 stores that had diversified into leisure, food and hospitality, with chains such as Babyshop, Shoe Mart, Splash and Lifestyle. English Wikipedia lists the group’s retail focus as apparel, footwear, consumer electronics, beauty, home improvement and baby products. The same 2006 Arab News report noted that Landmark had recently opened Centrepoint at Mall of the Emirates in Dubai, a “mall-within-a-mall” gathering goods from several of its chains under one roof.

The name is easy to confuse. English Wikipedia’s “Emax” entry is a disambiguation list that covers, among others, the E-mu Emax sound sampler and an E-Max shopping mall in Kowloon Bay, Hong Kong. The Gulf retailer is a different business from both.

Emax began big. In November 2006 Arab News reported that Landmark was about to open a three-floor, 135,000-square-foot Emax store in Sharjah, offering more than 300 brands of consumer electronics and home appliances, and described it as a “big box” format following one-stop stores in the US and Europe. Landmark’s executive director, Neelesh Bhatnagar, later Emax’s chief executive, spoke of a 130,000-square-foot store on Sheikh Zayed Road in Dubai as well. In September 2014 the trade magazine Reseller Middle East called Emax an “eight-year-old retailer” whose first official store, in Sharjah, covered 100,000 square feet; the two reports give different sizes for that store.

From big boxes to mall stores.

Growth across the Gulf followed. In September 2010 Khaleej Times called Emax “the electronics arm of the Landmark Group” and reported that it had opened outlets at Mall of the Emirates, Mirdif City Centre, Reef Mall and Oasis Centre through the downturn of 2008 and 2009, bringing it to 20 outlets in the GCC. Bhatnagar told the paper that large-format stores gave shoppers more choice and more room to compare products. In April 2012 Emirates 24|7 reported 32 stores in the GCC, nine of them in the UAE, including recent openings at Dubai Mall and Fujairah City Centre; the chain was then present in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman and Bahrain, with Kuwait the one GCC country where it did not trade.

The same 2012 interview gave a picture of how an Emax store was staffed. Bhatnagar said each new store added 40 to 50 of Emax’s own employees, store managers, sales staff and cashiers among them, while brands stocked in the store, HP and Samsung for example, supplied their own promoters, so that a single store needed 70 to 80 people in all. Recruitment ran through the corporate human-resources team of the Landmark Group, which he said employed about 40,000 people across its divisions, working with recruitment agents in each country; he named the Philippines as one source of staff, and Tunisia, Kenya, Jordan and Kazakhstan among newer ones.

Saudi Arabia was run with a local partner. In July 2013 Images RetailME reported that Emax’s stores in the kingdom operated under the aegis of the Saudi company Al Bandar Trading, with four further stores announced for Dammam, Riyadh and Al-Khobar.

The format changed with the market. By September 2014, Reseller Middle East reported, Emax had more than 56 stores across the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar and Bahrain, and Bhatnagar said the strategy had moved from large destination stores to slightly smaller formats inside malls, with Emax acting as the electronics anchor in many of them. The same feature described an after-sales service called Smart Care, buying guides that help shoppers question sales staff, and an online store run through the Landmark Group. As early as May 2008, Emirates 24|7 had reported Emax’s plan for its own service centres, handling installation, repairs and maintenance.

Hypermarkets, grocers and gadget halls.

Gulf hypermarket, grocery and electronics retailers are mostly seen from the car park. A hypermarket façade carries one short name in large letters, often in both Latin and Arabic script, and the same name is repeated on trolleys, shelf labels, carrier bags and the delivery app. Many chains run more than one size of store, from a large hypermarket in a mall to a smaller neighbourhood branch, and they often give each size its own version of the name rather than a new one.

The retail calendar shapes how these brands appear through the year. Ramadan and Eid, national-day celebrations and the start of the school term bring seasonal campaigns, special displays and printed or digital offer leaflets, and the companies publish these on their own websites, apps and social channels. Own-label ranges sit beside international brands on the shelves, with their own packaging under the retailer’s name or a separate label.

Not every chain in this group sells food. Bookshop chains combine stationery, school supplies and books with gadget aisles, and electronics retailers fill their stores with phones, laptops, televisions and home appliances. Their store fascias tend to follow the same pattern as the grocers: one name, read from a distance, often in two scripts.

Behind the shopfront, the corporate side is published separately. Listed retailers post annual reports, results and board details on their investor pages and through the Saudi Exchange (Tadawul), the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange or the Dubai Financial Market, while family-owned and group-owned chains describe their founders, owners and history on corporate “about us” pages. This guide uses those pages and dated press reports, and marks clearly what rests on a company’s own account.

Premium formats on Doha mall floors.

The most recent reporting comes from Qatar. In September 2023 Gulf Times, citing a statement, reported that Emax had launched what it called a new-format store for premium electronics on the first floor of City Center Doha, with ranges spanning mobiles, IT and accessories, televisions, home and small appliances, gaming, car electronics and speakers; Emax then ran three full stores and three kiosks in Qatar. In May 2024 the paper reported another new-format premium store, on the first floor of Tawar Mall, and described Emax as operating three large-format stores and three kiosks in the country. As of May 2024, then, Emax was trading in Qatar as part of the Landmark Group, according to Gulf Times.

Across those reports the story is one of store formats rather than of a single product: a three-floor big box in Sharjah, dozens of mall stores across five Gulf countries, kiosks, and premium-format stores on upper mall floors. Every report quoted here, from 2006 to 2024, presents Emax as part of the Landmark Group rather than as a separate company.

For a design guide, Emax shows how a chain inside a larger retail group can carry one short name across very different store sizes, from big-box fascias to mall kiosks. Compare Sharaf DG, another Dubai electronics chain begun in the mid-2000s, and Carrefour, the French hypermarket group. For this guide we use a deep teal, an ink green and an amber with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Emax’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.